Complex Adaptive Organisations
In today’s world one of the biggest problems facing CEOs is managing complexity. Staying flexible and focused is not always easy. Complex problems require a range of diverse and varied activities to be going on across an organisation, often simultaneously. Monitoring, managing and communicating between these activities creates a range of challenges for organisations.
People are very adaptive and capable. It is important that they are given the opportunity to be so. A common goal and clear operating parameters will allow teams to go on and set their own individual action plans. Teams and individuals are usually more likely to overachieve on goals they set themselves or have a major part in setting for themselves.
Providing a clear framework around what is acceptable and regularly checking achievement against this can be both supportive and empowering for a team. It provides them with the freedom to operate and adapt as needed, while ensuring that they stay connected to the central purpose.
It means that adaptation must occur at many, if not all, levels of an organisation. To enable this it is important that organisations have clarity around why they are doing things. The WHY allows all those involved to constantly reorientate and motivate themselves.
Once the WHY is in place then the WHAT and HOW of doing it are easier to see and adapt as needed. Getting this right assists people to remain self motivated and own the changes. This then enables them to be more resilient, adaptive and committed. Key things in any change process.
Key tools and resources are available to help this. Pivotal is the process of clarification. People need to be able to see the purpose for what they are doing. From there they can then align with it and structure their personal response appropriately. That clarification can take a little while to achieve, but the return on that investment (ROI), is from our experience paid back to an organisation many times over.
In today’s world one of the biggest problems facing CEOs is managing complexity. Staying flexible and focused is not always easy. Complex problems require a range of diverse and varied activities to be going on across an organisation, often simultaneously. Monitoring, managing and communicating between these activities creates a range of challenges for organisations.
People are very adaptive and capable. It is important that they are given the opportunity to be so. A common goal and clear operating parameters will allow teams to go on and set their own individual action plans. Teams and individuals are usually more likely to overachieve on goals they set themselves or have a major part in setting for themselves.
Providing a clear framework around what is acceptable and regularly checking achievement against this can be both supportive and empowering for a team. It provides them with the freedom to operate and adapt as needed, while ensuring that they stay connected to the central purpose.
It means that adaptation must occur at many, if not all, levels of an organisation. To enable this it is important that organisations have clarity around why they are doing things. The WHY allows all those involved to constantly reorientate and motivate themselves.
Once the WHY is in place then the WHAT and HOW of doing it are easier to see and adapt as needed. Getting this right assists people to remain self motivated and own the changes. This then enables them to be more resilient, adaptive and committed. Key things in any change process.
Key tools and resources are available to help this. Pivotal is the process of clarification. People need to be able to see the purpose for what they are doing. From there they can then align with it and structure their personal response appropriately. That clarification can take a little while to achieve, but the return on that investment (ROI), is from our experience paid back to an organisation many times over.
